The NFL's stubbornness made Tyrod Taylor one of its most valuable players

Tyrod Taylor is not one of the 10 best quarterbacks in the NFL. I’m not sure he even cracks the top-15 for most experts. But one thing is for sure: Tyrod Taylor is one of the league’s most valuable players.

I mean that in the financial sense. Taylor is not anywhere close to the MVP race. But his $9.7 million cap hit in 2017 makes him one of the rare middle-tier quarterbacks who is paid accordingly. In an era in which the middle class quarterback market has all but disappeared, Taylor stands alone.

This is Taylor’s third year starting for the Bills. He’s been a league-average quarterback for all three of those years — despite not playing with a very good receiving corps or coaching staff until this season — and, at 28, he is just starting to hit his prime. Typically that combination of production and youth would be enough to net Taylor a monster deal. We’ve seen quarterbacks like Mike Glennon and Brock Osweiler get money without the production. The 49ers will likely have to pay Jimmy Garoppolo over $20 million next season and he’s only played one full NFL game.

So why has Buffalo been so reluctant to commit to Taylor? The same reason Colin Kaepernick is without a job (well, kind of) and the same reason teams weren’t willing to give a talented player like Robert Griffin III another chance while apparently fighting over Brian Hoyer: Teams still haven’t embraced mobile quarterbacks. Especially mobile quarterbacks who look a certain way.

Calling Taylor a mobile quarterback is a bit reductive. He’s a talented passer. He’s one of the league’s best deep passers, he avoids turnovers and has improved in the pocket each of the last three seasons. Even without his mobility, Taylor is a better quarterback than Hoyer or Osweiler or Glennon, as he can actually complete a pass more than five yards downfield without conditions being perfect.

But Taylor is mobile, which opens up so many possibilities for his offense. He can throw on the move which opens up the play-action passing game. He can run zone read, which gives the offense an extra “blocker” in the run game. That makes the offensive line’s job a lot easier. And he’s a dangerous scrambler, which limits the amount of coverages a defense can play on passing downs.

Taylor is just daring teams to play man coverage on third-and-long…

Taylor will bail from a clean pocket or not go through his progressions and miss a wide open receiver from time-to-time; but his strengths easily outweigh those weaknesses, especially for a team like Buffalo, which is hurting for playmakers outside of Taylor and LeSean McCoy.

The same can be said of any of these dual-threat quarterbacks. But instead of embracing their skill sets, these old coaches tend to focus on what they can’t do, while not doing the same for quarterbacks who better fit their notions of how a quarterback is “supposed” to play.

There isn’t a better example of this phenomenon than Bill O’Brien’s handling of the Texans quarterback situation. Based on the first preseason game alone, it was obvious that Deshaun Watson gave the Texans the best chance to win. But O’Brien went with Tom Savage anyway because he was better suited to run O’Brien’s preferred scheme. Savage’s horrid play eventually forced his coach’s hand, O’Brien adjusted his offense to play to Watson’s strengths and now the Texans can’t stop scoring points.

Luckily for the Bills, a majority of the league has yet to learn the lesson O’Brien did this season. And as a result, Taylor has been undervalued by the NFL, which is how, in a league made up of teams happily overpaying their quarterbacks, Buffalo is able to get away with paying a good starting quarterback like a backup. It’s the biggest bargain in sports.

The NFL's stubbornness made Tyrod Taylor one of its most valuable players

In a league that overpays its quarterbacks, Taylor is one of the exceptions.

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